With a progressive CEO and culture and a huge merger in the works, Aetna is promising to help reinvent healthcare. Yet it is still up against the long-term unknowns about what will constitute truly sustainable healthcare.

Picking the right insurance plans for your budget and health needs is challenging. Weighing monthly premiums and co-pays against yearly deductibles and comparing the benefits different plans offer can make your head spin, especially if you are newly insured.

President Obama acknowledges the technical issues with HealthCare.gov, pledging his Administration will resolve them soon and asserting that the distressed web portal is not the only way to shop for affordable health insurance available through the ACA.

Three years after launching a 750-patient Medicare Advantage collaborative care pilot, Portland, Maine-based independent physician practice NovaHealth and insurer Aetna have shown concrete results in improving care quality and reducing costs. Technology and provider-payer cooperation played a large part in the program's success.

Like most mergers and acquisitions, the Aetna-Humana and Anthem-Cigna deals will need a fair amount of cultural alignment to yield the market complementaries and business synergies being promised amid the record-breaking valuations.

Some analysts who have looked at health insurers' proposed premiums for next year predict major increases for policies sold on state and federal health exchanges. Others say it's too soon to tell. One thing is clear: There's a battle brewing behind the scenes to keep plans affordable for consumers.